Carrying of an embryo or fetus inside a female viviparous animal is termed as Gestation. Human being during Pregnancy can have one or more gestations at the same time, also referred to as multiple gestations. There were over 136,000 multiple human births documented, according to the National Center for Health and Statistics in the United States in the year 2003. The time interval of a Gestation is known as the ‘gestation period’ and in humans this is 266 days or 38 weeks and this same varies for other animals. Basically the length of time the offspring have spent developing in the uterus is called the ‘gestational age’. The normal Gestation period is measured from the time of conception till birth.
Human pregnancy can be divided into three trimesters, viz the First Trimester, the Second Trimester and the Third Trimester and each three months long.
The last or Third Trimester starts about 28 weeks and the 23rd week is the first week when a preterm fetus is believed to be viable. A full-time baby is born only after the baby completes the full Gestation period inside the mother’s womb.
In humans, the baby comes at a gestational age of 37 to 42 weeks and all the children born before 37 weeks of Gestation is considered preterm and the children born after 25 weeks is usually considered ‘viable’. Preterm and low birth weight babies make up the second leading cause of infant mortality at about 17% and this varies accordingly.
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Preterm births exclusively consist of 12% of infant deaths with an 84% majority within the 32-36 week period. It is predicted that two million babies all over the world die annually within 24 hours of birth. One of the Medical Terminology for Pregnancy is Gestation and all mother to be should know what it is actually.
For further information on such pregnant related subjects, browse through the site Pregnancy.
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